


windows to nothing (there's no soul left)

by SPTRD



Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Horror, Body Modification, F/M, Loyalty, Not Incest, Psychological Trauma, References to Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 10:56:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7100062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SPTRD/pseuds/SPTRD
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're butchers. They hide behind animal masks and commit atrocities that are befitting to an animal nature. They're cruel; they're vicious. No one dares look into the eyes of butcher.</p><p>Except one. (But he found no humanity there.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	windows to nothing (there's no soul left)

You’re breathing hard, clutching at your chest as you wheeze out a strangled cry. The door is closing; it’s closing and you’re not inside. You’re so far away, too far away, and you know it. A sob that sounds closer to a screech breaks free from your throat and in response you hear whoops of laughter. Growls and screams, more animal than not, serenade you as you speed up your pace frantically. They grow louder, closer. No, no, please just let me reach Threshold, you beg silently. Don’t let them catch me. But your desperation pales in comparison to their bloodlust, and you know that your time is fast approaching.   
        You chance one last look over your shoulder, straining to catch a glimpse of your doom. And you do: Rabbit Doubt’s mask, smeared with red, looms closer with her loping stride. She is composed, relaxed even. She’s so close she could reach out and touch you, but you know she won’t. Rabbit Doubt loves the chase, loves the moment her victims resign themselves to their death, and loves seeing the hope fade from their eyes. You used to collect newspaper clippings detailing her kills. Your favorite article, the one still pasted above your bed, shows a stark, monochrome picture of Rabbit Doubt crouching next to a corpse. A bat adorned with nails was buried in the man’s head. The stylistic shot blurs out most of the carnage and instead focuses on her – even hidden behind a terrifying rabbit mask her triumph is palpable. You memorized every word of that newspaper article. The person she had dispatched so casually was the chief of police, a constant thorn in the side of the butchers.   
        Somewhere buried in a sick and twisted corner of your soul, you have fantasized about an encounter like this. As a child, you always sympathized with villains, enjoying the fevered ravings of Two-Face or the Joker over Batman’s cool, quick-witted one liners. And Rabbit Doubt was the strangest and most evocative of all villains. It was no matter that she wasn’t confined to fiction. Of all the butchers, none have fascinated you – and the media – quite like her. But now, as you heave labored breaths through nostrils quickly plugging with mucus and tears, you wish you had never heard of Rabbit Doubt, or Pharaoh, or the rest of the known and named butchers. You wish you had left it well enough alone.   
        You jerk and stumble as you hear sneakers slap against wet concrete, splashing through puddles and skidding around corners. It’s as loud and clear as a banshee’s screech. The vultures are gathering, hoping to jostle their way to front of the proceedings. If they’re lucky they’ll get your corpse as a cast-off of Rabbit Doubt’s, ripe for defiling.   
        You’re tempted to stop running and drop to your knees to beg for your life, despite knowing full well the futility of it. Butchers don’t care much for the concept of mercy. Before you can convince yourself that groveling in the best course of action, you slam against a reinforced steel door, closed and sealed. Threshold, one of the only safe houses so close to the butchers’ territory, had been your last hope and only resort. And now, that hope has led you right into the arms of your death. You turn and raise your eyes to meet the glittering black ones of Rabbit Doubt. She pads closer, hefting the heavy wooden bat on her shoulder, and you slump. You’re nothing in the face of inevitability, and you know it – your spectators hoot and whistle as their leader adjusts her grip disinterestedly. “Please,” you blubber. All dignity has left, and you’re left with terror and desperation. “Please.”   
        Rabbit Doubt laughs. You think dazedly that it is a beautiful sound. She laughs again, again, and soon, the vulture’s chime in. Their mirth rises in a cacophony of sound, writhing through the night air, sinister and telling.   
        And then, rising above the noise, a whistle of wood and metal screams down. You close your eyes as death meets flesh. 

        But it isn’t death that greets you. It’s pain, blistering and overpowering. It swirls up in dizzying waves and you have no choice but to succumb to them, and then, to unconsciousness.

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        You wake to a lion’s mask. Everything is hazy and muted. You have the vague inkling that later it will all crystallize into agony, but for now, you are blessedly numb.   
        A voice cuts through the fog of your head. The lion is talking.  
        “I can’t believe you wasted morphine on this one.”   
        “Oh look at it, Pharaoh. The poor little thing’s hurting.” There was a pause, and you are under the impression that is a silent trade of laughter going on above you.   
        “I don’t want to have to end up taking care of another of your playthings, Doubt.”  
        “Well I wouldn’t have had to get a new one if you didn’t let the last one get blood poisoning.”   
        “It’s incessant squealing annoyed me. All I did was shut the door.”   
        “Yes, and then promptly forget about it. Regardless, if it hadn’t gotten sick, it would have starved to death anyways. You do realize you have to feed these things right?”  
        “This is why I don’t bother with them. They’re too much trouble for any gain you might take from them.”  
        “Oh but they’re so much fun.It saves effort, and time, when you don’t have to go and hunt down a new one. Being that is, you don’t let your current ones die.”  
        “They are worth no more than maggots. And they're more inconvenient, you can't just step on them when you're done.”  
        “They're more valuable than maggots.”  
        “So long as they serve your purpose, that is.”  
        Footsteps circle around your body and a new face swims into view. A rabbit, grinning and stained with red, crouches near your body. You whimper, but reach out for it all the same.   
        “Ha! How adorable,” the rabbit exclaims.  
        “That’s disgusting,” the lion returns, “don’t let it touch you. It’s probably diseased.”   
        “Well, we’ll just have to cure it then, won’t we?” The rabbit draws even closer, so close that you see it isn’t a rabbit, it’s – it’s something else, something unnatural and strange that sparks a primal, beastly fear in your breast. You know now, you need to get away; you must escape this place.   
        You panic, starting to struggle in bonds you cannot see. The rabbit-monster seems to take delight in your feeble and pathetic wriggling. “Don’t worry, little one,” it says. “We’ll make you into something better now. You’ll thank me soon. Now, go back to sleep.” The rabbit-monster reveals a thin needle in its hand, and bends close. Fog rushes in and pulls you insistently, farther and farther from the two creatures staring down at you with dead and glassy eyes. The last thing you see is the rabbit murmuring quietly to the lion. You think you hear it say, “I’ll have him back yet.” But then darkness swallows the fog and you are lost completely. 

        Waking once again has none of the dream-like qualities of before. You are in immediate pain, and you bite back a screech as your body shifts. You’re strapped onto a gurney with clinical mirrors stationed like uncaring sentries around you. In them, you see your lower half. A scream gurgles from your throat, but it is cut off by swiftly rising bile. You don’t even have room to turn your head and expel the contents of your stomach, so you are forced to lay there and choke on your own vomit. Miserably, you swallow. It burns your throat horribly.   
        You close your eyes tightly, trying not to look to the mirrors again. If you did, you would see that which threw you to sickness before – pale, veiny white feet and long calves, blotchy with fading bruises and faint scars, attached to familiar brown, boney knees and thighs by a thick line of black stitching.   
        You don’t know how long you’re there, lying with your eyes screwed tightly shut, when you hear footsteps. Trembles overtake you, but you press your lips tightly together, and breathe stuttering bursts through your nose.   
        A pair of gentle, cool hands brush over your brow. Your eyes pop open, against your will. You see a slim figure step back and retrieve something from a medical tray balanced precariously at your side. “W-who,” you rasp. Your throat protests violently, so you fall quiet again. Elastic stretches tightly around your bicep, pinching the skin and coaxing red marks to the surface. You barely feel the prick of sensation that follows. The figure leans close, and all you see is a burlap bag with large black buttons sewn onto it in a crude and mocking approximation of eyes.   
        “Don’t speak. Don’t blink. Don’t cry. Your pain is not your own down here.” The figure wrenches off the tourniquet and presses a wad of gauze to the crook of your elbow, securing it with a Band-Aid. The sight of such an innocuous object sitting there so innocently on your skin shakes you to your core. It brings back memories of childhood laughter and recklessness but all too soon your fond memories are tainted by the cruel reality of the present. You turn back to the figure, perhaps to beg it to take off your bandage, or maybe to let you bleed out and perish on this cold metal table, but it has already melted away into the darkness. All you can recall is black button eyes, unblinking and wide.   
        The only thing that eclipses the pain is fear. 

        It is days later by your own approximation when you hear evidence of life returning. Of course, with no light but the flickering bulb above you and no sound but the oppressive silence, it could be only hours, or even minutes later. You see a rabbit mask bob into view.   
        “I’m sorry, little one.” Rabbit Doubt has a surprisingly mild voice for a mass murderer. It is smooth and low and carries the faintest note of comfort. “I ruined your legs before, so I had to give you new ones. Don’t worry. In time you’ll regain the ability to walk. Modern medicine is truly miraculous.” You don’t find any assurance in her words. It must show on your face, because Rabbit Doubt sighs and shifts away. “You’ll have to undergo more surgeries I’m afraid. You do so resemble him, but your skin color is all off. He also had a beautiful voice, almost like a girl’s, so I hope you’re not in love with your voice now. Don’t worry; I’ll be very careful with you.” Another form slips into the room, pulling a steel cart. On it is an old, boxy TV, the kind that brings you a rush of nostalgia. Piled haphazardly next to it are VCR tapes missing their sleeves.   
        “Your growing obsession with these ‘experiments’ is starting to worry me,” the person says, stepping into the wobbly ring of green-yellow light cast by the bulb affixed to the ceiling. Dramatic shadows play along a lion mask, deepening the eye-slits until you can only see black where white sclera should melt into iris and pupil. “Perhaps you should let the dead rest.”  
        “I’ll do that when I join them,” Rabbit Doubt shoots back, not bothering to turn and face the other butcher. She is busy fiddling with your drip bag.  
        Pharaoh’s breath whistles out from between his teeth, but he remains silent. You think that it is strange, watching them interact. They are familiar in a way that belies a long history, and move in quiet, knowing tandem, circling around you. They are so high above you, burning suns in a sky of ash, and you, as a child, foolishly thought you could crawl your way across their burnt and smoldering kingdom to meet them at the dawn. You know better now, but such knowledge is useless anyways.   
        “Rah…rahh…et,” you wheeze out. Rabbit Doubt comes to stand near your head, smoothing a rough and calloused palm across your hairline.   
        “Shhh, now,” she croons. Pharaoh stands a little ways behind her. Rabbit Doubt gestures, and he slides the cart in front of him fluidly. “Just wait a little longer, little one. Later, you will begin your conditioning. Don’t worry now, I’ll have you back soon.” You have a sinking feeling that her last few words were not directed at you, and a vague memory of a morphine-induced haze and a conversation between animals rises up. It’s quashed by the sound of someone approaching, and you stiffen in fright.   
        A familiar figure with black button eyes appears from the shadows. It stops a respectful distance away from the gurney, and bows deeply. Rabbit Doubt looks down on you, but you cannot glean what it is that’s in store for you. The mask remains in its frozen, maniacal grin, though now it has been cleared of blood.   
        “This is Lily. I call it my ragdoll. You two should get along well; isn’t that right Lily?”   
        “Yes, ma’am.”   
        “You see? Lily will help you come back.”   
        “Take that infernal bag off of your head, you vile creature,” Pharaoh interjects. The fond, if exasperated tone he spoke to Rabbit Doubt with is gone. In its place is ice and fury and impatience. Lily obeys, and you see her hand trembling as she reaches up and drags the burlap away from her face.   
        Shock drenches you as you stare at what is, quite obviously, a man’s head attached to what appears to be a teenage girl’s body.   
        “Come here, doll,” Rabbit Doubt orders. Lily takes a few reluctant steps forward to end up at the butcher’s side. “Look,” she says, motioning to Lily’s throat. “You can barely see the scar.” You can’t. But you can see where skin meets skin, somehow unnatural and perfectly harmonious. You feel your pulse fluttering in both wrists against the heavy-duty straps confining them to your sides. Is this your fate? To be a circus-freak, a made golem for the butchers to entertain themselves with? “We changed its voice to match the body. Ah, it took quite a lot to keep this one alive. It was the only survivor among…oh, how many do you think, Pharaoh?”  
        “At least seventy.” Seventy people, mutilated and distorted; seventy people torn apart and crudely stitched back together to the butchers’ arbitrary specifications? You feel sick. “You were trying to cheat the odds.”  
        “Yes, seventy, that sounds about right. You see, the surgeons in my employment had a rather hard time attaching the spinal cord, and all those delicate nerves from head to body. It was a very stressful affair. And all I have to show for my efforts is an ugly, useless ragdoll.” Rabbit Doubt sounds vaguely disgusted. “But that’s no matter now. You’re here, in one piece, and in no need of a new body. All your remaining surgeries are purely cosmetic too, so your recovery should go by quickly. We’ve already wasted time though. You’ll need to start physical therapy as well. We wouldn’t want your body rejecting those grafts after we took the effort to attach them so painstakingly. Lily, start on the stitches.” You thrash, trying to deny the needle headed for your arm and the thin sharp scissors already snipping away at the black thread in your legs. The effort is futile, however, and soon you’re falling back into familiar darkness. 

        You muse that unconsciousness and you have become well-acquainted by now. You’ve been through countless more surgeries at the hands of Rabbit Doubt and her lackeys, along with the rounds of anesthetics that accompany them. You’re losing parts of yourself, but every time you go to look for them, they slip away like sand. Your mind has become a treacherous place as of late. Holes in your memories are being plugged by borrowed ones – that had been the ominous-sounding “conditioning” Rabbit Doubt had spoken of, what now seems like years ago. It just amounts to watching hours upon hours of nonsensical home videos, shaky and grainy and sometimes out of focus. Most of your day is now comprised of staring lifelessly at a screen.  
        Even now, you’re strapped into an upright chair, and just moments before the TV stutters to life, you catch a glimpse of your reflection. You are not you anymore – your skin is too pale, your hair is too fine, and your voice…well, you don’t let yourself think too long on what they’ve done to your voice.   
        Rabbit Doubt sits primly beside you, a steadying hand on your forearm. She’s been more relaxed these days, and you find yourself in a tentative upward swing in mood. You still haven’t been out of this cellar-cum-laboratory, but she’s allowed you the autonomy to move from room to room within it, and you know it pleases her when you take advantage of such a privilege. Secretly, you despise leaving your small, concrete-walled room. The other parts of this subterranean labyrinth are occupied by many more of Rabbit Doubt’s “experiments,” all shackled behind reinforced steel bars. Their faces, pitiful and shadowed in bands of black, provoke a deep discomfort inside of you. The worst ones, though, are the accusers. They used to scream and cry out obscenities at you, but once Lily had been sent to silence the vilest, they fell silent. That doesn’t remove the weight of their hateful glares, however. You try to stay away from the north side of the Laboratory.  
        The gazes of the other prisoners are still somehow preferable to the images on the screen before you, however. Watching these tapes, while you once viewed them as a reprieve, have become a violation of sorts. You feel as though you’re stepping into someone else’s body, which takes on a disturbing aspect when you know that you have literally taken someone else’s skin. There’s a shiny, taut look to your features now, the effect of ripping away your natural skin and replacing it with what is, for all intents and purposes, scar tissue. It is something that you know is deeply unsettling for others. The only person who can stand to look at you anymore is Rabbit Doubt.   
        You feel her gaze burning into you now, and automatically stiffen in your chair. You let your chin drop to your chest, allowing the wispy blond strands of hair – a wig – to provide a flimsy barrier between you and the gaze behind that mask.   
        “I think I can give you back your name soon, brother,” Rabbit Doubt says quietly. She’s taken to calling you that nowadays. “Brother” is sufficiently ambiguous, more intimate than “you” and less condescending than “little one.” You feel as though you are hovering somewhere between plaything and person in the eyes of Rabbit Doubt. She’s molding you into someone, bashing out your sense of self via trauma and replacing the broken parts of you with fragments of another person. Lately, you’ve found that you don’t mind the change. You’d do anything to see the approval shining in those dark, fathomless eyes.   
        The hum of the VCR tape rewinding fills the air. “Would you like that?” She murmurs. “Would you like to be whole again?”  
        “Yes,” you reply. “I think I’d like that.” She relaxes at your words, and you think you catch a glimpse of a smile as she gets up and turns away. 

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        Shiloh is back already, gleefully recounting her murder spree. She laughs when she recalls the terror on her victim’s faces, and pouts when she tells you that a few managed to evade her, instead falling prey to the vultures.   
        “Those fucking scvangers,” she grouses, “are always stealing away my fun. I was really looking forward to making that bitch sing.” Shiloh tosses down her rabbit mask and throws herself into the overstuffed recliner you had insisted on a few months ago. You cluck your tongue as if in chastisement of the vultures, and offer her a sympathetic smile. Shiloh's sulk lessens slightly at that, and then disappears entirely as Pharaoh – he’s never allowed you to call him anything else – walks into the room. He too has removed his mask, and a wide grin stretches his lips from ear to ear.   
        “Good news, Doubt,” he says, looking over at her. He’s always been the first to indulge her whims, and you feel grateful, on your more stable days, that he was there for Shiloh in your stead. Pharaoh has always supported her, like you did before your first incarnation perished.   
        “Yeah?” she drawls.  
        “The East End is ours now. The pigs squealed and ran after Rotter swept through.” Shiloh claps, the vultures now entirely forgotten, smiling lazily from her sagging, off-color throne.   
        “Well done to ‘em,” she says. “Isn’t that right, Marcus?” Her large, dark eyes are now fixed on you. Even after four years, she still hesitates when addressing you. Sometimes you fancy you can see the war of hope and cynicism in her gaze, waiting with bated breath to see if you say the right thing. Waiting for confirmation that she’s truly succeeded in bringing her beloved brother back from his grave.   
        You never disappoint her.  “Of course, ‘Lo,” you say dismissively. “But we could have done it better.”  
        “Obviously,” Pharaoh says, just a touch of arrogance in his voice. “We’re the best butcher gang in the city, for good reason.”  
        “And we’re just about to initiate our newest member,” Shiloh rejoins. “You think you’re up for it, big bro?” Her smile is feral, sharp; you’re reminded of a fierce and untamable lion – she is far more the part than Pharaoh, you think.  She has never been a rabbit.   
        “Duh,” you reply, pivoting to the face the chair she is tucked into. You take the few steps over to it and flatten yourself on top of her, to the sound of her delighted laughter. A hazy memory of watching a scene like this play out from behind the cold impartiality of a TV screen fills your head, but you dismiss it easily now. Whoever you were before is of little consequence. You’re a brother now, and a butcher and a thief and murderer. Your entire existence focuses down to a single point – Shiloh, your beloved sister, whose loyalty and love for you called you back from death.   
        Her carefree smile insists upon an answering one of your own. Tonight, you will complete your trial by fire, cementing a place for yourself among the butchers. You will laugh and sing and dance in the ballet of murder that rises from the ashes of the day, staining your clothes and mask red so you may return with the dawn to rinse yourself clean. You will go, hand in hand with Shiloh, just as you did when you were young and dumb and trying to outrun the world along with your troubles. You’ll be a creature that is feral and savage and godlike, utterly untouchable to the humans who look up at you in awe.   
        The last four years have been a trance, and you’re ready to wake up. 

        Shiloh is reaching for you, palm outstretched. “Marcus,” she says. That’s all she needs to say, because you already know the thoughts behind those eyes. You read them as easily as words on a page. What you see in her gaze – once so inscrutable and depthless – makes you smile.   
        “Yes,” you answer. “Yes.”   
        Oh what wonderful times to be alive.  

Fin.

**Author's Note:**

> Some of the science in this is actually possible (though I might have stretched it a bit for the sake of the story). The psychological psuedo-science of it, however, I definitely pulled out of my ass.


End file.
